The Writing Thread

[ButterCookie]

Pounding paws crack our fragile roof.
These paws should be familiar, yet
they live and work too close to hoof.
You and I, we are the bleeding end of a rich man's bet.

They'll sell our bones,
Char our flesh,
Thrive off our pained moans and
Display us, hanging. Dripping. Fresh.

Don't make a sound,
Clasp your china through my iron
claws. Pretend that with gold thread you are bound,
tight and fragile. Fight your urge to banish the demon
hounds of hell and middle class. Neither you or I, little one, can distinguish
between the masters and their whipped... hollowed... effigies... mutts.

They'll strip our dignity
then strip our fur, our beauty.
Wear our integrity
as trimming. Bloodthirsty cruelty.

[daniellaaarisen]

"You and I, we are the bleeding end of a rich man's bet."

^^ love.

[daniellaaarisen]

Hey guys, I need your help. A few of the schools I applied to in the UK want a portfolio of my writing. They are asking for six poems. I'm going to post a few favorites on here.... what six would you choose? The choices need to convey different elements of my writing. If you only have the time/energy to read a few, tell me if you'd include the ones you read or not-- I know it's not reasonable to assume anyone will read all this!


The Lover of a Ghost

I’m the lover of a ghost swallowed
by Arachne’s famished aspirations,

by her beguiling professions, her
ever-soft asphyxiation
her sweet gossamer grip, the shackles
seeking love requited. I have

heard his faded testimony, I have seen
him take the choke. I fell upon him
with my midnight veil, and in the center
stood my eye— waxing, approaching full

bleeding out my soul’s conviction.
And in my lightness shone his chains—
his spider’s art, her labyrinth web
and spoke the moon to a dying man,
“I promise to help you live.”

He begged for me to wane, he pushed me
through the velvet night. He almost loved
Arachne’s bites and chains, sweet throbs
of fruitless guarantee.

Yet I’m the lover of a ghost who spins
his own web of indecision, I’m the lover
of a man who can save anyone but
himself.



Forgotten, Awake

I fell through the world and landed
in a poorly lit dream, where androgynous
shadows dared I sort them from the rest
through my kaleidoscope eyes, with
bated breath. This is where
I found you, in a world
where the negative spaces do
the talking and all the figures
with no mouths smirk in the dark—
knowing I am blind behind
vanity’s pleading eyes, knowing
that the beauty had a youthful beast.
This is where I found you and
this is where you’ll stay, once I
grow up, grow away from this
self-loathing sin and begin to
be forgotten, begin to
fall awake.



A Nautical Room

Your sweet breath swells
into mine, fills a sail
softly undulating as if
the winds of the world
waned away. You blow

heavy on my back when
the sound of your
discomfort fills the room;
you slip into
my sheets and watch
them billow above us,
giving half-satisfying
direction towards a
horizon lost. So we

sail on, buck up,
tie our shoes and wait
while sea water slaps
against the hardwood floor
and the breathless coastal fog
hovers above our bed. So we

wait for the instant when
I can make you better, wait
for when ecstasy isn’t
a curse, wait for
the moment when you can
finally love me, wait
for the day
I raise mast by myself.


Untitled Prose Piece (I don't think I've ever posted this here)

The moon swayed against her bare back every time the wind pushed with enough vigor to weave her body left. Its light hugged the swell of her breast, swiveled down her side unevenly. For a moment, she was fully exposed in the paleness. Then the wind would rise up again and the broken pendulum would shift left like before, swallowing her body in darkness. She eluded both the dark and the light, unable to balance herself on the grass below her naked form. So she swung back and forth, left to center, dodging the shadows for the light before involuntarily swinging back into the black again.

She was used to this inconsistency; the artist in her could sense it from simple moments like this one. Everything became a metaphor once she acknowledged her thirst for one. She wanted to believe that her inability to stay still was somewhat uncontrollable, like the way the beads of a kaleidoscope fall with the slightest movement, like the wind that eased her sideways. So she spent a good part of her evenings on the grassy hill behind her house, rising and falling with each breath, swinging left to right inside of the evening's unpredictable beat.

This is the woman I fell in love with. A woman who defined herself by the world surrounding her, a woman who eased her way into the universe as precisely and delicately as I eased my way into her mind, into her open body. This woman was poetry that flowed in the perfect places-- her hips melodically dipped into her waist and rose up again, billowing into the fullness of her chest. Her eyes were the punch line that killed, that broke the immaculate curvature I knew so well. Sometimes, I'd find myself lost in her softness, wrapped in the overwhelming effect of such subtlety. I'd watch her write in bed, following her lips and her hair and her spine and her fingers until she'd catch me staring and stare right back, breaking her general sense of tenderness with something staccato and poignant. Her eyes reminded me that she had meaning; she had a distinct and riveting pulse. She existed beyond me; she existed beyond herself.

And then she fell in love with me in return. She let herself succumb to the warmth between us and melt, molding inside of my every breath. She abandoned each curve that she loved, slapped her arms lifelessly around my ribs, dropped the look in her eye that once kept me hungry. All of a sudden, her pulse walked in step with mine.

I was lost—slithering away from her on a buttery track that she had kneaded with her own hands. Each touch became a more and more obsessive attempt for completion; she searched my body with her fingers, frantically seeking any trace of herself in my skin. And as she slept, in her only gentle moments free of desperation, I realized that she had cascaded into the most beautiful loss of self that I had ever seen.

[daniellaaarisen]

Syncopation

I told you to put your head there
on my chest
as we lay in our bed.

I wanted you to hear my heart beat
and seamlessly float into
its rhythm,
our rhythm
of delicate sways and boundless ease
with no name and face
and age, no
latitude and longitude.

I wanted your heart
to not be alone for a while,
to follow.

As you sleep, I collect
your snores and sighs
in a jar under our bed. I swallow them
like water, gulping you in
until morning, when
you insist to once again
become plottable.

We split, we multiply.
Into all of our moments
without one another, into all of our
feigned strengths,
embellished and worn,
adding distinct recognition
to each syllable of our names,
differentiating.

I climb into this bed—
our bed—
and watch the demarcation.
I watch you lean into
my body and consume
the smell of my skin, I feel
your palms stretch
underneath me, their
desperate hunger
for completion.

We have diverged and we
have merged, monogamous
in a moment, synonymous
in an experience.

I hate myself for loving
how you love me
whatever way you can.



Invisible Blood

I was never fully satisfied, chasing you
on heels that weren’t yet broken,
dodging the defenselessness you allowed me to feel
like it was a bullet soaked in a plague.

But this Achilles found her weakness
when something in her ankles snapped
and she surrendered to the ground
apologetically.
I clung to you in spite of myself,
a tendril clasped for dear life
around the stoic woman
who found so much warmth to give
when needed in another’s darkness.

You work only by the moonlight,
working only with your hands:
silently, I watch you wrap your fingers
around my limbs
like an irrepressible vine,
attend to my reservations
like they belong to your own blood.

Blood—
an indelible tie of which
we can never be fully conscious;
the endless space we make in our womb
where ends don’t ever have to meet.

I’m on this earth to share the bonds
that warm my aching body,
here in skin and bones to watch
all of these bones break,
absorbing all the life you have to give
so that I may one day
give it back to you.



Witching Hour

In September, he found his witching hour,
while the rest of the house was asleep
and I was the only one left
to switch out the records for him—

To sing “teenage wasteland” with him,
to top off his rum for him,
to light his cigars.

In September, it was cool outside
but his body stayed warm.
I sat in the cold with him,
rocked in the wind with him,
my eyes following the furious sway
of his body with him.

But he wasn’t furious with me.

Baba o’Riley excited my father.
“Doesn’t this get your blood going, honey?
“Don’t you just need to hit something?”

I watched him dance with it,
the heavyweight bag flying seamlessly
between his drunken fists.
I watched him with frozen veins,
with all the need in the world
to sit still, to never hit anything
like he could.

He took his last swaggered punch
and I jumped to break his fall—
clinging to hands that know
my blood all too well;
haunted by a breath
that once kissed me goodnight.



My Eleventh Hour

I caught my own breath in my hands
and took the time to breathe it back in--
sweet and satisfied, stale and strangled,
spangled with lavender and sour milk
and what it means to be nationless.

Tell me you smell something different.

Tell me I'm bound to what I give
but never to what I am given;
that I can choose when the balloon pops,
when my corpse falls earthbound;
that the rushed and eager touches
I collect under my bed
can be quilted into
a sickening new height of love.

I can't remember who told me
that I wasn't young anymore.
It might've been the stout cashier woman
who proclaimed me a thief when I
slid a Snickers bar into my pocket.
It might've been my Playboy Mommy:
she warned me of the sins in my blood,
of her own obsession
with a woman's power to unveil.
Or maybe God told me on the day
when he made me suddenly
wretchedly
unequivocally alone.

On this ancient earth, I'm rarely glad to seem young--
until I'm tangled in sheets
and limbs I can't get out of,
until the simplest mechanisms of
a beating heart lose their intrigue
in my stoic desperation for blood.

Tell me you smell something different on my breath;
Tell me I can choose to be boundless.



Gold Dust

It makes the pocketwatch far from
My pocket
Tick against my thigh
At the type of speed
My heartbeat misses. It's like
The rain can't be wrong today
If it's dropping gold for me
From the hands of a man
Birthed in foreign fields--
Expelled from a womb
That still tells her wives' tales
In terms of pasos and siestas.
It's "adios" to that
For the man
Who now loans me the dollar
So I forget how to nap--
Forget how to eat in a world
Taking it too easy
In a world
That won't stop moving
In a world
Bound to a clock
From some world
That can't tell when time's up.
I choose to roll in gold dust
In a world
Where I can't be golden.

[Sahara]

Hey Dani,

It's a reasonable assumption with writing this good

My choices are:

Syncopation
The Lover of a Ghost
My Eleventh Hour
Forgotten, Awake
A Nautical Room
Untitled Prose Piece

I found it very hard to choose! I feel that the first four are your very best work and the last two really demonstrate the breadth of what you can do with words (not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy those too).

Incidentally, I don't think I've read Forgotten, Awake before, and it just knocked me over. There's an incredible dense claustrophobia to it. (It reminded me very powerfully of the feelings in the scene in Snow White where she's running through the wood and it seems to be attacking her. I don't know if that makes sense! I haven't thought about it in years but there's the same oppressive fear and creative use of the dark about it.)

You're dealing in shades of black but there's much more richness to it than just the tired old notions of shadows and dark figures. The negative spaces image is so striking. Your words are careful but not analytic or bloodless. Love it love it love it.

Best of luck with your application!

[daniellaaarisen]

Kathryn, I cannot thank you enough for your detailed and complimentary feedback. Seriously, I owe you one. Dinner when I come visit Dublin!

[Musicman408]

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

Kathryn, I cannot thank you enough for your detailed and complimentary feedback. Seriously, I owe you one. Dinner when I come visit Dublin!

Dani, this weekend I'll go through these and make my recommendations. Upon first glance though, they sound beautiful, just like you!

[-Lillith-]

Wow i read in here for like over an hour the last days.
Some of you have written amazing stuff.
Even thou some parts are hard to understand , because i am german and dont know some word. Especially Danielle s poems, but its a good way to learn more vocabulary.
There are alot of pretty inspiring poems around here

I wanted to share some of my stuff


Alone in the middle of nowhere,
Could you take my Hand?
There s some nightmare
on that i stare.
Can`t you be here ?
help me thru the fear !


Theres no ground under my feet,
i feel.
Everything is fading
so fast away.
It doesnt seem real.

A weird film behind my blind eyes.
A scream that makes my ears def.
I dont reach the higher hights.


Its empty here,
its empty there,
And it seems as no one cares.
I reach out for everyone around,
Not the strong woman ,
I ve always shown.

Just a little girl,
living in her shadow world.

Runs to the basement
as fast as she can,
holds the key,
Oh ! she is shivering.
Afraid of what is right behind
Aware ! Lillith,
dont be so blind!

She opens the door as fast as she can,
Closes even faster then.
The key she found,
turns twice around.
A secure place ,
she might have found?

Under the table,
little women,
she sits alone and cries.
Shivers. Panic.
Wet and scared.

But then tehre s something
that she heard.
A melody so clear and bright,
makes her feel
„I ll win the fight“

Her breathe calms down,
a voice around,
a spark of hope,
that she had found.

The walls , they fade,
so does the rest.
„ has this been a cruel test?“

Now she wakes up,
all alone.
Its all right ,
she is at home...


The next ....

This time she was going to die,
it wasnt even worth the try.
She thought the end was near,
saw an unfulfilled life disappear.

She runs thou everything is lost,
she still wants no matter what it costs.
Bursted into tears,
she herself disappears.

Helpless in fears , burt into tears,
that moment she woke up,
she was lying in her bed ,
but it still turned `round in her head,
afraid of life , afraid of death.

No one knows.
ist goes just the way it goes,
suddenly her eyes lit up.
She turnes around to look at the moon, suddenly ,
there was someone in her room.


This is something i have written about some nightmares a while ago.

[ryguy2010]

ok everybody. Just dismiss my typos if I have any. Most of you already know all of the letters on my keyboard are broken but wanted to add to this Amazing thread!

Manor Child.
My child still swims around inside
My child has yet to learn to glide
Swimming in the upper terrace of fright
It doesn't have to be darkness to search the light
As my child swam down the stairs
Nothing had changed just astonished glares
If the currents enveloped all of my fears
"he'd" soon drown inside those tears
Swept away with such inundation
My child rowed on without hesitation
Perhaps my child would never surrender
After all he was my defender

[-Lillith-]

Can you tell me what it is about exactly.. or better what you wrote it about?

I wrote something about a long deep friendship beeing over,..My english is not that good as the most of your poems, sometimes i wish i had more words to describe in english. But i ll keep learning.
All in all this is a try to describe my feelings about what was or is happening...

Summer is back,
in every way,
brightest light,
i know you ll stay

My darkness went with you,
away,
I ve let you go,
it hurts to say.
You leave a whole inside my heart,
always a place,
inside my art.

But its much too late,
to get back those times,
thats the sad reason,
i am writing these lines.

I miss you now,
i ll miss yoou when,
the sun shines so very bright again.
I cant keep you on this way,
long time friend,
you lost your play.

I was your friend for years and years,
we even shared the deepest fears,
cried and cried so many tears.

I feel now,
it is time to let you go.
You lost yourself,
i see it in your eyes.
And then i know
too many lies.

The times i remember so long ago,
it was so much fun.
Oh no.

But now its tme to say goodbye,
why did this time come,
tell me why ?

One day i might understand.
But its another route i ve planned,
lies dont fit in there by now.
Get it!
Its time to let me go!

Thought i would mean much more,
but you are just a shadow,
of someone very dear,
the person that i used to know.

You ve let go my hand,
i saw you fading faster,
the i stood alone,
black,
in this disaster .

That moment i had realized,
the sprakling light has left your eyes.

A memory i try to hold,
remind me of those times,
colors orange, green and gold,
time for us to divine.

I miss who u used to be,
but it is the trhuth i see.

And now i know i will say goodbye,
this has ben my very last try.

[daniellaaarisen]

Le Premier

in the iron, we are clad
we were won by something mad
that drinks fools empty. in the earth
in the fire, in the wind, that
sweet, sweet water
we are still what we once were. in the

moments that I find you,
when I sink, dissolve inside you
i am breathing for
your name. but my wind
it cannot reach inside the part
of you that preaches
false desire

i can pick us up as ghosts
who left their entrails in the hallway
where i met you. i’ll show
the heart of every haunting
the beating of the drum
pounds soft inside you. but when

i crawl back in your bed, hold
your head between my hands
i’ll know i’m holding something less
than the man who reached inside me
grabbed my lungs and eyes to blind me
and ripped my air straight from
my chest. if you see me

softly ringing the bell that sculpts each
wasted second in your memory
get on your knees, say your hail mary’s
pray that i’ll still be here standing
in the ruins of our love. that love

erupted life inside me, built a fortress
from thin air, put the poetry in the words
that i once spoke, and as I stand
here stone in stone weezing heart
and broken bone i can’t help but think
that you might be the one

[Sleepless-Child]

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

Le Premier

in the iron, we are clad
we were won by something mad
that drinks fools empty. in the earth
in the fire, in the wind, that
sweet, sweet water
we are still what we once were. in the

moments that I find you,
when I sink, dissolve inside you
i am breathing for
your name. but my wind
it cannot reach inside the part
of you that preaches
false desire

i can pick us up as ghosts
who left their entrails in the hallway
where i met you. i’ll show
the heart of every haunting
the beating of the drum
pounds soft inside you. but when

i crawl back in your bed, hold
your head between my hands
i’ll know i’m holding something less
than the man who reached inside me
grabbed my lungs and eyes to blind me
and ripped my air straight from
my chest. if you see me

softly ringing the bell that sculpts each
wasted second in your memory
get on your knees, say your hail mary’s
pray that i’ll still be here standing
in the ruins of our love. that love

erupted life inside me, built a fortress
from thin air, put the poetry in the words
that i once spoke, and as I stand
here stone in stone weezing heart
and broken bone i can’t help but think
that you might be the one

I think it's more straight-forward than the other things you wrote, or a bit more simple, that might be the reason you don't like it.
I think you add an incredible melodic quality to it. You know, "the beating of the drums", "the wind", the bell ringing, and on and on. That, with a good melody, would make a great song.

Oh, and, "Le premier", in french, is "the first", not "the one". But that's maybe what you meant to say.

[daniellaaarisen]

Originally Posted by Sleepless-Child

I think it's more straight-forward than the other things you wrote, or a bit more simple, that might be the reason you don't like it.
I think you add an incredible melodic quality to it. You know, "the beating of the drums", "the wind", the bell ringing, and on and on. That, with a good melody, would make a great song.

Oh, and, "Le premier", in french, is "the first", not "the one". But that's maybe what you meant to say.

Yeah, I did mean to say "the first." It's sooooo much more lyrical than the poems I usually write, and I kinda like that about it. It's different for me and not necessarily in a bad way.

Thank you for your comments.

[Sleepless-Child]

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

Yeah, I did mean to say "the first." It's sooooo much more lyrical than the poems I usually write, and I kinda like that about it. It's different for me and not necessarily in a bad way.

Thank you for your comments.

Is the first always the one ?

Anyway, for some reason, your poem reminded of a poem by a great french author, Guillaume Apollinaire (check him out if you can, seriously great). They have this melodic and lyrical quality in common (though the topic isn't the same...at all. he's talking about Dionysos and german mythology to describe his undying love for a german girl ) :

"My glass is full of a wine trembling like a flame
Listen to the slow song of a boat-man
That tells he's seen under the moonlight
Seven women with green hair till their feet

Stand up ! Sing louder and dance
So that i don't hear the boat-man song anymore
And put near me the blond girls
With motionless look and curly nats

The Rhine The Rhine is drunk where the grapevines look at themselves
All the nights gold reflects and stumbles in it
The voice still sings to death
Those fairies with green hair who celebrate the Summer

My glass broke like a burst of laughter."

Sounds way, way, way better in french, so you can actually take that as a compliment .

[daniellaaarisen]

It was on this day that your Lord had made
that I reclaimed my tender mystery. My destiny
shook beneath me, settled itself between
each of your folds, shattering against the shore
as a collective sigh, one wave. And to think
you thought you were something
without me. To think
of a lover’s stroll along the coast
without the clamoring voice that I gave you,
of the angry release you inflict upon the earth
until I strip your high tide away.

I do it all with a whisper, what you attempt
in Triton’s scream. To dance our waltz
you chase the curvature of my hip,
navigate each intricate step through
desperate fingers in my hair. You take pride
in this slavery, swell with joy as the corners
of my mouth soften, a smile to break
the barrier between earth and sky –

my permission that molds us to one. So
with clasped hands, intertwined, with the hunger
of fiends – your sea foam illumed by my Luna’s light,
my moon, ever brighter, because it’s touched you.

But be wary, my seamen, when the smile fades,
when the moon woman wanes, retreats to her sky.
Be wary when I fade for your new stillness
will haunt you, left alone to your devices, nothing
in my wake.